Tag Archives: The Newsroom

Let’s make it an all-around TGIF day, starting with Carl Winslow and Family Matters and now moving onto the Tanners and Full House, who we like to think of as the original Modern Family. But this time, the milkman and the paperboy are getting the Newsroom A Day treatment (how’s that for predictability?).

We think it’s fair to say that Hurricane Sandy was deranged (happily deranged? that’s debatable), and while we regret the target that she chose – one so close to home – we’re happy that the worst is over and we’re now into the recovery and rebuilding process. It’s not entirely fair to blame the theme song to The Adventures of Pete & Pete for all this death and destruction and general disturbance but Polaris always seemed kind of bizarre, and “Hey Sandy” always seemed kinda mysterious, something about it that we couldn’t trust. With that in mind, we have today’s A Newsroom A Day, and with it, hopefully, we say “Later, Sandy.”

We’ve been diligently posting remixed Newsroom opening credits over on our sister site A Newsroom A Day, and we thought we would be remiss if we didn’t share today’s entry here. We think this is our favorite one so far, although it makes us miss Game of Thrones oh so much.

As promised, we’re going to quickly dip our toes into the somewhat toxic pool of The Newsroom analysis. Like with any review or analysis, anything we say is ultimately futile and inconsequential, because, in the end, it’s not going to change the way you feel about the show, and it’s certainly not going to alter Aaron Sorkin’s vision or persuade him to reconsider his writing style. But in the case of The Newsroom, anything we say, any argument we make, feels especially meaningless in the wake of all the criticism and (less so) praise it’s received. But, hell, let’s be a Greater Fool and try anyway.

Let’s just say out of the gate that we like the show, and while that might put us in the minority we stand by our verdict. But what’s interesting or pertinent to us is not so much that we like it – or if it’s “good,” assuming there’s some kind of objective rubric which can calculate a show’s quality (which there’s not) – it’s the question of whether or not the show is worth watching. And we think the answer is: absolutely. Doesn’t that fact that the show seems to be so reviled (or snickered at) in so many corners yet still watched obsessively indicate there’s something of worth there? Certainly, The Newsroom doesn’t garner the same level of propulsive minute-by-minute Twitter reaction on Sunday evenings as Breaking Bad (nor does it come close to the AMC show’s unanimous, breathless praise), but it’s definitely one of the most talked about shows, even if much of that talk comes with head shaking, finger wagging and head scratching. And if the show was bad, unrelentingly terrible, it wouldn’t have lasted, or at least the discussion would have quieted down. We can’t imagine that if Work Ithad not been canceled after one week the din about its repugnancy would have continued. We would have had our fun and then watched it fade away, nary giving it another thought. But with The Newsroom the debate continued for ten episodes, and seemed to increase as we approached the season finale. Clearly, people were entertained by the show. Which, we certainly concede, isn’t necessarily the same as enjoying the show.